“No.” Her voice is sharp, trembling. “Don’t sayit. You already didn’t.”
And just like that, I see it. The moment. The echo. The thing she wasn’t supposed to hear.
Her shoulders tremble once, just once, and she turns away before I can read more. I am a fool.
“Ione,” I try again, softer, “what you heard…”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Because I believed you. And that’s on me.” She wipes her face, turning from me. "I'm going to sleep in the other room, do not follow me, do not speak to me."
She leaves the room before I can find words that matter.
I don’t follow.
The bed is too big without her.
Not in the poetic sense humans like to sigh about—but in theactualsense. A vast, cold, unnecessary expanse of fabric and silence. I lie in it like a corpse wrapped in regret, staring at the ceiling like it owes me answers.
In the next room, she cries.
Not loudly. Not like the dramatic outpouring mortals are known for. No—her grief is quiet, pressed between her teeth, swallowed into the dark. But I hear it. I heareverything.
And it’s killing me.
I don’t understand how something so soft could cut me so deeply. I don’t understand why her pain is worse than any wound I’ve ever taken. I only know that it is. That her silence now feels louder than her voice ever was. That I hate this wall between us—this physical one, this other one, thick with things unsaid.
I want to fix it.
But I don’t know how to touch something without breaking it.
I wanther.That much I know. Want her like breath. Like blood. Like the cold pull of the earth that calls the dead home. But I want my revenge, too. That old,burning promise I made before she ever came into my world with her firelight and her sharp tongue and her inconvenient humanity.
I close my eyes.
Revenge. Her.
Can I have both?
Do I have to choose?
My fingers curl around the edge of the pillow she once slept on, and I pull it closer—like a fool. It still smells like her. Skin and warmth and a life not meant to touch mine.
She’s still crying.
And I still don’t know how to be anything but a monster.
Chapter twenty-three
Silence is Bliss?
Ione
Thebathroommirrordoesn’tlie, but it also doesn’t tell the whole truth.
Eyes puffy. Lips tight. A woman who cried herself hoarse into a pillow, then brushed her teeth like she still had some kind of control over her life. I wash my face, use my toner, and moisturize because I refuse to be 40 and look 50. I take my bonnet off, and spritz my scalp, rubbing it gently before collecting my twists on top of my head. Staring at myself in the mirror, I give myself a pep talk about not speaking to him and not falling into the trap that his dick might set. Or his pretty mouth. Those wide shoulders. 20 fingers. No! Stop that! Nothing he could say would make me feel better. I heard him, why lie to Moireth?
I pad downstairs without a word. He’s already there. I can feel him before I see him—that unnatural stillness that hums beneath his skin like a storm waiting for permission. He doesn’t speak, but he stares. Of course he stares. I can see him out the corner of my eye but I don’t look back. I just move around him, careful not to let him know that I am actively ignoring him.
"I made food," He says softer than I've ever heard him speak.
